Taking Responsibility for Carbon

The Carbon Trust is a global climate consultancy driven by the mission to accelerate the move to a decarbonised future. It has been pioneering decarbonisation for more than 20 years for businesses, governments, and organisations. A leader in carbon footprinting, the Carbon Trust certifies products, organisations and value chains around the world.

Behind the scenes there is a lot of complex methodology to ensure rigour and transparency, but the basic principle of carbon offsetting is very simple.

A project takes action to cut 1 tonne of CO₂. An independent authority verifies the reduction has taken place and issues a 1 tonne “Emission Reduction’”. You purchase the Emission Reduction, which is retired on a public registry, so it cannot be used again. This process allows you to take responsibility for your own carbon emissions by funding a carbon-reduction project that could not take place without your investment.

Offsetting alone is not going to tackle climate change.

We must move to a low-carbon world as quickly as possible. But, even in the best-case scenario, this transition will take time. In the meantime, we all have a carbon footprint, regardless of how hard we try to reduce it.

Until we reach a zero-carbon world we need to do something about this unavoidable, residual carbon footprint. Paying to reduce an equivalent amount of carbon emissions through voluntary carbon offsetting is the most cost effective, fast and efficient way of doing this.

Offsetting tackles climate change by:

• making real reductions in amounts of CO₂ in the atmosphere that would not have happened otherwise
• providing funds for renewable technologies and energy efficient solutions
• raising awareness of the impact that our lifestyles have on the climate, encouraging us to do more to reduce our carbon footprint

Unlike other environmental impacts such as water use, it doesn’t matter where in the world carbon is reduced. This means that money spent on offsetting can be channelled to projects that deliver the maximum carbon reduction in the shortest time.

There are strict guidelines set out by the United Nations and carbon offsetting is subject to some of the most robust measurement and verification processes in the climate and development space.

To generate carbon credits, the project developer must first demonstrate that Emission Reductions created would not have happened without their project.

Carbon reductions are then regularly measured to an agreed methodology, independently verified and only then are carbon credits issued. When you offset your carbon emissions these carbon credits are retired on a public registry and cannot be used again. This ensures that your payment directly funds a known and verified carbon reduction.

We work with our expert partner ClimateCare, to choose robust, high-quality projects that deliver emission reductions alongside sustainable development impacts.

Many of these projects are currently in developing economies. This is because until January 2021, the Kyoto Protocol dictated the locations of carbon reduction projects. This has now changed, giving scope for us to support projects in a wider range of locations in future, as they come online.

The goal of carbon offsetting is to encourage new behaviour that isn’t already being undertaken in the marketplace.

1. Businesses nearly always reduce first. The first move should always be to reduce emissions. In reality, businesses invest in reducing their in-house carbon footprint before considering a payment to offset what remains. Internal reduction activities frequently save money, while investing in carbon offsetting involves a financial outlay. Few businesses make this sort of investment without first getting their own house in order and being fully committed to operating sustainably. Research shows that the typical offset buyer cut almost 17% of their scope 1 (direct) emissions, while the typical non-offset buyer reduced scope 1 emissions by less than 5% in the same year.
2. Even if a business has done all it can to reduce its emissions it will still have a carbon footprint. Paying to offset it is better than not paying to offset it. Offsetting delivers real benefits for the environment, wildlife and local communities.

PAS 2060 is the internationally recognised specification for carbon neutrality and builds on the existing PAS 2050 environmental standard. It sets out requirements for quantification, reduction and offsetting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

An increased scrutiny regarding carbon offsetting and carbon neutrality claims, and newly evolving and diverging environmental regulations in the UK and Europe, means we have taken a proactive approach to review our future sustainability strategy.

We want to inform our customers about the work we are doing to reduce our carbon footprint. We are removing carbon labelling on our bottles so we can deliver more detail on our sustainability strategies via our website and other channels, whilst continuing to work with the Carbon Trust to measure and reduce our carbon footprint and increase our ambition to meet climate targets. This information will be accessible through a simple URL on the back label which will lead all interested parties to regularly updated, factual information regarding our strategies.

Packaging without the carbon neutral messaging will start to hit stores in early July. Consumers will be able to access our sustainability initiatives via accoladewines.com/carbon.

Carbon neutral messaging will start coming off marketing materials from July onwards. We are currently working through a transition period of removing the carbon neutrality labels and roundels from our product packaging, which we aim to complete by the end of January 2024. Due to their long shelf life and infrequent production schedules, some products with carbon neutral labels are likely to remain on shelf up to and beyond January 2024.

This does not affect Accolade’s commitment to reduce our environmental impact. We have recently committed to the Science Based Target Initiative with a view to implementing achievable targets alongside third party verification within the next 2 years.

Accolade Wines will continue to work alongside all our customers to adhere to their sustainability requirements including the completion of annual data entry, aligning with the Science Based Target Initiative and actively working to reduce our environmental impact.

We are still measuring our carbon footprint in the most material areas of the business. We have also signed up to the Science Based Target Initiative and will be implementing these targets over the next two years.

Please refer to our website www.accoladewines.com/sustainability for more information on the sustainability initiatives we have in place.

We will keep our website up to date with our environmental strategies and consumers are able to view our sustainability initiatives by following the URL on the back of the product label. Information will also be provided via relevant brand channels and teams.

Products with the new packaging will be hitting stores from July onwards. Consumers will be able to view all details on our website as products roll out into stores.

There will be no changes to our winemaking process or the ingredients used in the wines as a result of removing our carbon neutrality messaging.

Please reach out to [email protected] in the sustainability team for more information or any further questions.